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I would be interested in this and willing to contribute. I have experience in software startups, though I have never founded one myself (yet).
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Sep 21, 2011 15:45
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A year or so ago I was examining a startup called "Doband", which I thought would fail. However, the guy really took it seriously and moved to Silicon Valley to try and get funding. A couple days ago the name popped back into my head for some reason, and my googles found this link: http://workstream.doband.org/ (password 'action') It's a frequently updated workstream of their last few months, and you can see both the rapidly shifting product as various VC's give their input, and his frustration in struggling to secure funding. I applaud him for his effort and tenacity, but the idea is pretty weak (maximum 30 potential customers, "action oriented brands" like Nike) and the name is horrible. Reminds me of doobie and doodie.
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Sep 22, 2011 01:45
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snagger posted:I can see the upside here. One person dreams of traveling to Europe and it turns into a group of 5 people planning a trip next summer. Monetizes super-easily with travel companies, language schools/software, or the aforementioned 'action lifestyle' brands for stuff like ski trips. I think his vision was more like, Nike starts a campaign of working out more, and people join up, and receive discounts from Nike for accomplishing goals and taking pictures of their Air Jordans and whatnot. Then he has this alternate vision, where people start "dreams" and get benefits for accomplishing them. Essentially it's a glorified to-do list app that kind of has a Groupon discount thing going. In order to be accomplished as he sees it, it really needs to be all-out and funded so giant corporations take them seriously. My gut just tells me it won't succeed, but it isn't a terrible idea.
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Sep 23, 2011 00:03
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Elephanthead posted:Here is my free idea: Maybe something with a quoting system? Like you post, "I want 300 pounds of junk taken away from my garage," and people bid down on the service. They have to handle the whole thing, but the website vets the 'contractors' and people review them. Isn't this sort of like Angie's list? snagger posted:Hey dudes! I think an FAQ would be good to store links and bits of advice, but why can't you just edit the first post to include this?
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Oct 6, 2011 03:28
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My startup was founded by a business guy, but he had 10 years as a VP at Apple and had experience as a product manager, so he might be an aberration. It would be difficult to justify the salary of a non-programmer at a tech startup with only a few people. Business guys with tons of time on their hands tend to muck with the product because they have nothing else to do.
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Oct 7, 2011 14:39
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The prebranding website idea might find a niche, but personally if I was going to put put my heart and soul into making a company, I'd certainly want to put time into thinking of a name and logo that I like and reflects my business. Doing all that work and then saying "whatever" about its name seems ridiculous. But again, there may be a niche.
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Oct 15, 2011 01:55
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TraderStav posted:I've always been curious what the scope of Entrepreneurship is considered 'startup'? Is it a term typically exclusive to internet startups, or just anyone who decides to start a business up on their own and just refers to the infant stages of any business? I'd say a startup is any business you think has the potential to grow rapidly. I wouldn't call a small landscaping business someone creates a 'startup'. Also, there is a serious distinction between services companies and product companies. A services company is limited in growth by the amount of contracts they can bring in, for instance building mobile apps or websites. A product company sells a product and tries to increase the potential market by modifying and improving the product, so there is a lot more potential for rapid growth.
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Oct 24, 2011 02:35
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Leperflesh posted:The cost of living is high. Really high. But tech job salaries are also high. Some people who move here kind of get shocked at apartment prices or whatever and decide it's too expensive, before realizing that their entry-level programming job will pay $100k and it's (relatively speaking) not that bad. Of course, most people who live here are pretty much accustomed to paying more than 50% of our income for housing, too, when I guess 1/3 is more usual in other parts of the country. I'm a lifelong Boston resident, and much of what you said sounds like it is out here (except worse weather, and surprisingly less liberal politics despite what you hear about Massachusetts). However, anyone who spends even 1/3 of their entire post-tax salary on housing, let alone 50%, is doing something wrong. Or maybe my priorities are different from a typical yuppie. In Boston, you can live in a pretty nice one bedroom apartment for sub-$1500/month if you move a little farther out from the prime locations. Anyway, I got this solicitation today: Startup posted:Why you want this job: I got this from someone related to it and I'm not sure they would want me to post the name, so I edited it out. I have experience with most of the things they require, even a sizable node.js application, but I don't think the person they envision really exists. Expert in web programming as well as functional OpenGL algorithms? Wtf? I question how much they actually know about software development, despite the wide range of technologies and buzz words listed. It looks like something a VC guided them on writing. I plan on leaving my current company in 1-2 years and finding a position similar to this in an early stage startup, but for the skills they require I would ask for an enormous equity stake as well as a high salary. It seems like they want to work a single person to death rather than hire a team to build out a product.
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Nov 6, 2011 18:54
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| # ¿ May 2, 2024 05:47 |
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I want to harvest more money out of my users. I built a free app that integrates with a financial investment product. I get 3 to 10 new users every day purely from organic app store search. I get about $1.60 per user, per year off of mobile ads. The subscription product that removes the ads nets me $4.55 per user, per year. I'm not really interested in ideas for pushing more subscriptions, I'd rather just make more money off of everyone if possible. I have many ideas for how to sell more subscriptions, but the big money will be in increasing the money extracted from the huge amount of non-premium users. I would like more users, of course, but that is really the job of the business I integrate with, as a subsection of their users naturally seek me out if they want to operate via mobile, because I'm basically the only game in town as the competition is laughably bad. I am trying several tactics to get more users per day, which is helping, but that is a tough battle. I have considered renting / selling my email list, but I have yet to find a way to reliably do this in a straightforward manner. Any info or opinions on this? I have lots of detailed information about each user, as well. Also, there is affiliate marketing. Amazon does not allow you to put affiliate links in mobile apps that aren't in the Fire store, which I find odd considering how much money they would make, so for affiliate marketing I'm basically pushing weird financial services I have never used, or pushing products from weird retail websites to them. I'd rather just find cool, relevant amazon products (books, etc.) and put some affiliate links in the app, which I apparently can't do (please correct me if I'm wrong). Also, my users REALLY love my product, I'm extremely reactive to their needs and am helping them invest lots of money. So the user base is very active, using the app several times each day. So, does anyone know any tricks for squeezing more dollars out of your users?
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Jan 30, 2016 06:53
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